Back in October, we announced that the Release to Manufacturing (RTM) build of Exchange Server 2013 was signed off. Since that time, we’ve been focusing our efforts on releasing the next version of Exchange through multiple distribution channels to our business customers.

Today, we’ve reached another important milestone – The Exchange team is excited to announce the general availability (GA) of Exchange Server 2013. You can download the bits from TechNet today and evaluate the product for 180 days. You can also sign-up for the Office 365 Preview to get the most current Exchange experience in the cloud in just a few minutes.

For those of you who wish to roll out Exchange 2013 in greenfield environments, or in labs and test environments to evaluate new features and test with LOB applications, you can start right away. If you are running an Exchange 2010 or 2007 environment, you’ll need Exchange Server 2010 SP3 or Exchange 2007 roll-up in order to upgrade. We know you are eager to get moving to the new version, so we are hard at work putting the finishing touches on Exchange 2010 SP3 and the roll up, which are on track for release in Q1 of calendar year 2013.

If you haven’t already, we encourage you to learn more about Exchange 2013 by reviewing Exchange 2013 documentation on TechNet or attending an Ignite training session. It’s a good idea to evaluate prerequisites and system requirements at this time, as well as become familiar with Exchange’s simplified building block architecture, so that you can get a head start on hardware sizing, planning and purchasing.

The EHLO team has been adding more technical content on the new Exchange since the RTM announcement:

I think with the advent of MS Cloud services, and everything now geared towards the Cloud including the new Exams, it's time for me to start focusing on other technologies! Most companies do not want, or need to have everything in the Cloud and I think MS have forgotten this and are trying to push this on everyone. First, you discourage PF support in 2010, now you re-introduce. Windows 8? You HAVE to sign in with an email account to complete setup? Nah, not for me thank you very much. The UI of Ex2013 and Server 2012 is seriously disappointing.

I had a query from a customer, who pushed this into production with there existing Exchange 2007 environment, is there a way to roll this back? I am assuming that was a no-no considering that Exchange 2007 Rollup is not yet available.

"you’ll need Exchange Server 2010 SP3 or 2007 roll up in order to upgrade"

Was that a placeholder for specifying the specific Exchange 2007 rollup that will be required, or will any of them do? ;) I'd recommend you add that info to the article either way.

Is there an ETA on 2010 SP3 or whatever 2007 rollup we'll need yet? It's nice to play with in a greenfield environment but the real work starts with coexistence testing. I miss being in the TAP program!

Why even release something, when there isn't even a way to Upgrade?? As if, for some minuscule chance someone will be installing Exchange for the very first time in their Org. Ya right. The majority of Orgs who would be interested in 2013 would be those with existing Exchange environments. So, very good insight in to releasing this with no SP3 or Rollups available for the near future. The whole point would be to release so it can at least be tested to see what and how it would work in the Production environment. Someone at MS is smoking something...

This was really insulting to us as well. We were running out tests on our TechNet versions for months, but now that it's out in our action pack we have no way to use the software we are required to move to since it has no compatibility. Especially when update after update had to be revised two or three times to work right we have lost a great amount of trust in Microsoft's ability to remain stable. We couldn't even activate our 2012 server software without an hour on the phone and four departments.

I don't see why Microsoft would release Exchange 2013 without the ability to integrate it with 2010 and 2007 until next year. Can't even consider deploying Exchange 2013 without the ability to test it integrating with our Exchange 2010.

Is Microsoft desperately trying to remove critical features to meet deadline dates for RTM?

We were all planning on migrating to Exchange 2013 in the next month when we had to put the brakes on our deployment. Not having the necessary SP and RU's available at RTM to integrate with existing Exchange deployments makes us feel that Microsoft has rushed the whole Exchange RTM. Now, we're finding out that Team Mailboxes also won't be available in Web Access until SP1. Exchange 2013 sounds like it's not finished yet and it was rushed into RTM without necessary and critical features being available. I'm really disappointed in Microsoft for this behavior. You should finish your products before releasing them.

If we can't integrate Exchange 2013 RTM with our existing Exchange 2007 or 2010 systems, then what's the point? Why in the name of all that is holy would you release a product to RTM that can't upgrade from a previous version?

This is NOT RTM if you didn't include the ability to integrate it with existing versions. The Exchange team should hang their heads in shame at this situation.

I'm totally befuddled here. If we can't install it into our existing Exchange environment then how can this be an RTM version? Nobody can deploy this unless it's a brand new install. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize the product isn't finished yet. You hit your RTM date, but totally blew your feature-set? Tell me it isn't so. Tell me that the Exchange team isn't falling into the trap of having to wait a year to have the first service pack deployed to finally make an RTM stable and fully featured.

Just wonder... was it mistake by purpose that E2010/E2007 do not coexist with E2013? Has there been so big competition inside MS that you have had no time to offer migration path from legacy Exchange versions to the newest one?

I'm curious how the SP3 debacle actually matters to most of the commenters. MS made a poor choice, for whatever reason (technical, marketing, or both) to not have SP3 ready at the same time as the RTM. Ok. So you have to wait...so you complain that they should have waited and released it later so SP3 would be along with it. Well, you'd still be waiting the same amount of time, so what harm is there other than public whining? The only people that have legitimate complaints would be those in the RDP/TAP programs, but they already have the beta-SP3 anyway and are coexisting at this time.

@RTM_The problem is that by releasing Exchange 2013 to RTM before it was finished, Microsoft has effectively put Exchange 2007 on extended support. It was a sneaky *** way of ending support 6 months early. In addition, all the licensing you can buy now is for Exchange 2013, which doesn't allow downgrade rights to 2007. It's also more expensive than it used to be for CALs. In a nutshell releasing Exchange 2013 6 months too soon screws all the customers out of support and costs them more money.

If companies are at the phase they are ready to deploy the first E2013 into their organization they are forced to perform lot of testings with previous version's SPs instead of freezing the existing version and having target only for the E2013.

Of course the companies which are not willing to deploy E2013 before SP1 are not having worries.

I have suck and not good reading the technet requirements for exchange 2013, so I have installed exchange 2013 on a AD organization with 1 exchange 2007 sp3 ru9 server (mbx,hub, cas).

No problems on install, no warnings...

I have migrate mailbox between the two servers and redirect mail flow and owa/rpc/activesync on new exchange 2013 server.

No problems on migrate, no warnings...

So exchange 2007 server do nothing..

So I have one problem:

- on outlook 2010 (always update), offline caching working bad. it's ok and after some times, mails are still block on draft or send folder , delete profile , recreate and it's ok and after some times... so I use online mode (not very a full problem because users are on Remote desktop server.) but why offline caching doesn't work...

I have suck and not good reading the technet requirements for exchange 2013, so I have installed exchange 2013 on a AD organization with 1 exchange 2007 sp3 ru9 server (mbx,hub, cas).

No problems on install, no warnings...

I have migrate mailbox between the two servers and redirect mail flow and owa/rpc/activesync on new exchange 2013 server.

No problems on migrate, no warnings...

So exchange 2007 server do nothing..

So I have one problem:

- on outlook 2010 (always update), offline caching working bad. it's ok and after some times, mails are still block on draft or send folder , delete profile , recreate and it's ok and after some times... so I use online mode (not very a full problem because users are on Remote desktop server.) but why offline caching doesn't work...

I have suck and not good reading the technet requirements for exchange 2013, so I have installed exchange 2013 on a AD organization with 1 exchange 2007 sp3 ru9 server (mbx,hub, cas).

No problems on install, no warnings...

I have migrate mailbox between the two servers and redirect mail flow and owa/rpc/activesync on new exchange 2013 server.

No problems on migrate, no warnings...

So exchange 2007 server do nothing..

So I have one problem:

- on outlook 2010 (always update), offline caching working bad. it's ok and after some times, mails are still block on draft or send folder , delete profile , recreate and it's ok and after some times... so I use online mode (not very a full problem because users are on Remote desktop server.) but why offline caching doesn't work...